Les Chevaliers du ciel

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Les Chevaliers du Ciel
French theatrical poster
Directed by	Gérard Pirès
Produced by	Eric Altmeyer Nicolas Altmeyer Christopher Granier-Deferre
Written by	Gilles Malençon (screenplay) Jean-Michel Charlier (comic book) Albert Uderzo (comics)
Starring	Benoît Magimel Clovis Cornillac Géraldine Pailhas
Distributed by	Pathé
Release date(s)	15 October 2005 9 November 2005 18 February 2006 23 February 2006 5 April 2007
Running time	102 min.
Language	French
Budget	€19,610,000
IMDb profile

Les Chevaliers du Ciel (English title Skyfighters, literal translation The Knights of the sky) is a 2005 French film directed by Gérard Pirès (Taxi) about two air force pilots preventing a terrorist attack on the Bastille Day celebrations in Paris. It is based on a comics series by Jean-Michel Charlier and Albert Uderzo.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Plot
2 Filming
3 Reaction
4 Aircraft
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 Media links
8 External links

[edit] Plot

Stolen Mirage 2000-5 MkII evading flares

The film starts out at the Farnborough Air Show where a demo Mirage 2000-5 is stolen. Captains Antoine Walk'n Marchelli (Benoît Magimel) and Sébastien Fahrenheit Vallois (Clovis Cornillac) are instructed to escort it back. They find the rogue Mirage flying stealthy under a Qatar Airways Airbus A340. They get the order to abort when the rogue Mirage is about to fire on Fahrenheit. Walk'n is forced to shoot the demo Mirage down when it is about to fire a Super 530 missile at his wingman, disobeying an order which results in both of them being kicked out of the air force.

They get a promise to be reinstated if they fly a Cannonball race over hostile territory to the Horn of Africa for Special Missions to help sell the Mirage to an Asian customer. Its competition consists of F-16's.

During the race, their tanker does not show up for in-flight refueling because terrorists have killed the pilot. This forces the Mirages to land in hostile territory where their aircraft are taken. Walk'n and Fahrenheit manage to escape with one of the planes and destroy another, one plane however remains in the hands of the terrorists.

The terrorists plan to shoot down a tanker over Paris during the Bastille Day celebrations but 'Walk'n and Fahrenheit intercept the rogue Mirage and shoot it down over an unpopulated area.

[edit] Filming

Mirage 2000

Les Chevaliers du Ciel was filmed in co-operation with the French Air Force. Initially the standard safety rules applied, but eventually the minimum allowed altitude was reduced to 3 m (10 ft) and the minimum distance between aircraft was reduced to 1 m (3 ft). The filming of these flight sequences seen in the movie were mainly done from the air, as opposed to Top Gun where most of the filming was done from the ground.

To achieve this, one of the Mirage's external fuel tanks was modified to fit a camera. A HD camera was considered for this purpose, but it did not fit in the fuel pod. Tracking shots were done from a hired Lear Jet.

Additionally, jet aircraft are not allowed to fly over Paris. As a result of this, all the Paris filming had to be done on the actual Bastille Day (14 July) for which the filming crew got special permission.

[edit] Reaction

Benoit Magimel says "There is no shame in saying (about the movie) that it looks like Top Gun à la Française..."

[edit] Aircraft

Mirage 2000-5

Maiden flight: April 27, 1991

Model: 1 seat

Maximum speed: Mach 2.2

[edit] Trivia

The Mirage fighter aircraft series is featured in the popular French comics Tanguy and Laverdure, primarily authored by Jean-Michel Charlier and illustrated by a few different but named illustrators. The two protagonist, Michel Tanguy and Ernest Laverdure, are two fighter pilots in the French Air Force and member of the elite White Stork Squadron (escadrille des cigognes).

In the beginning of their story, they start as two student pilots flying T-33s, it's not until their fourth adventure when they finally sit in the cockpit of a Mirage IIIC. Later on their fighters are upgraded to Mirage IIIE's and the last adventure saw them flying Mirage 2000s. Tanguy and Laverdure's adventure preceded Top Gun by at least one generation. Their adventures are full of political intrigues, espionage, and the romance of aviation. Until today, there is no English translation of their adventures, the aspiring English reader has to learn French to read the originial French comics. However, the comic has been translated into other languages, such as Indonesian.

The stories were made into the 1967-1969 French TV series Les Chevaliers du Ciel, starring Jacques Santi as "Lt Tanguy" and Christian Marin as "Lt Laverdure". The series was made by ORTF and a version of the show dubbed into English and titled The Aeronauts was shown in the UK by the BBC in the early 1970s.